Thank _you_, Heildbra for your astute response and for the recognition.
What I had in mind, and which may well be somundane as to be
beyond response, is the rather typical equation/conflation of 'woman'
with 'practice/practical', as in the transcendent/immanent assignation
deBeauvoir points out, and which also takes the form, in other ways of
viewing things, as Pocahantas (sorry to defileour list with mass culture)
the large -breasted native american earth-mother singing persuasively
(though not enough...) to John Smith about the unity of man and nature.
The earlier post about women not engaging in 'theoretical'
discussion but more in practice also called to mind an old, and too
easily forgotten essay by Adrienne Rich: "Toward a Woman-Centered
University." Here she speaks of the university system itself, its
foundations in rhetoric (what Kenneth Burke refers to as 'the manly art
of self-defense' _A Rhetoric of Motives_ p.52) and agonistics.
Also, to the split of radical fems from SDS, the memo from Casey
Hayden, and so on and so forth, inquiring after the so-called brotherhood
professed.
But perhaps this is all old hat by now. Not in College Station,
Texas, home of Phill Gramm.:(
Lastly, you are correct, as far as I know, about women and email.
But I wonder what they _do_ with it: correspondence? listservs? I myself
use it for this list, and for the endometriosis list ( a sort of support
group), as well as for much correspondence. Several women I know surf the
net regularly; I am one. I have found much of use there, though far far
more advertising crap than I had hoped to find. But that's how I found
this list, and the endo one, too.
I have often wondered: why is there no female/woman theorist of
the stature as, say Fredric Jameson?
Thanks again for emerging from lurkdom. I, too, do sometimes.
Elaine.
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